Friday, 15 July 2011

We don't just want to succeed, do we? Nah, we want to kick ass. Clubbing someone over the back of the head is fine and dandy, but it's not as good as knocking them unconscious. And that also applies to clubbing someone on the back of the head in a roleplaying game.

Welcome once again to the blog and another installment of "What Crap Has He Come Up With Now?" Oh, I have the biggest, smelliest pile of crap for you today and some homework for extra credit. Today, we're going to talk about success levels.

The Hits Just Keep On Comin'
When you make an active roll against opposing dice (or difficulty dice), you succeed if you roll higher than your opposition. This grants you 1 hit and commonly represents the necessary energy and effort needed to pull off the attempt. But it gets better the higher you roll. For every 10 points rolled higher than the opposing roll, you gain 1 additional hit.

Thursday, 14 July 2011

Challenges come in one flavour: all of them. Spontaneously, randomly, and unexpectedly. Just when you expect the face a bitter snowstorm of stress, Life dishes out a hot heaping of difficulty. Nothing is what it seems and while you can't change the balance in the universe to let you find a great parking spot, the best you can do is develop your skills to succeed where others would fail.

Depressing as that last paragraph sounds, it's not made to depress. This is the basis for difficulty dice in the Optional System and it's time to pick up where we left off yesterday.

Randomizing the UnexpectedDifficulty dice provide the opposition to a character's attempts at performing any option not directed at another living creature. Manipulating inanimate objects, climbing, jumping, interacting with the environment are all applications for difficulty dice. Think of them as Life's opposing roll.

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Several hectic days have come to a close and peace has settled across the land. While a few skirmishes break out here and there (particularly between the armies of Dog and their newest recruit sneaking into enemy territory to get revenge on the realm of Cat for drinking from her water dish), I'm ready to sit down and tell you some more about the Optional System.

With some of the basics in mind, I can finally start to develop a signature for this blog. Or at least think about what that signature might be. To be completely honest, self-promotion is one of my weakest points. This blog was intended as an introductory tool-slash-live exercise in RPG creation hoping to cash in on followers through discussion and curiosity alone, giving it room to flower into something beautiful from there. So with the basics on options and dice in store, we can begin to discuss the means behind the madness.